2008 – Miura preliminary design model

At the beginning of December 1965, Nuccio Bertone commissioned Giorgetto Giugiaro, Director of the Bertone Styling Centre, to develop a compact sports car characterized by a mid-engine layout designed to accommodate a particularly large power unit.

For reasons of confidentiality, a distinctive feature of Nuccio Bertone’s character, Giugiaro was not told which car manufacturer the project was intended for. In the absence of precise information about the client, he therefore developed three different styling proposals, interpreting the brief in different ways.

Aware that Bertone was working extensively with Bizzarrini at the time, Giugiaro developed one of the three proposals using some of the stylistic elements associated with the marque, particularly in the treatment of the front end. The result was a compact, low-slung sports car in which the mid-engine layout determined the proportions and architecture, while the design translated these technical requirements into a balanced and distinctive form.

Giorgetto Giugiaro left Bertone at the end of December of the same year, and the three studies, never developed beyond that stage, remained in the archives.

Many years later, Fabrizio Giugiaro found one of the original drawings in a drawer. With the complicity of Arrigo Gallizio, the two took the drawings and, without Giorgetto’s knowledge, had the model built at full scale for his 70th birthday.